http://amiresque.blogspot.com/p/about-me.html

Mar 1, 2016

It's with a bittersweet feeling that I announce this news, but this blog will be permanently closed and not updated again. I'm not going anywhere of course, and have only updated to a better and bigger website, with the name and logo completely intact. Still, this blog was my first foray into writing in English and starting it back in February 2010 has changed my life in ways I definitely did not foresee at the time. I've loved writing in this space and I love every single person who ever read any of my posts and commented and encouraged me along the way. I hope you follow me over to the new venture. Click on the image below to be redirected to the website.

Jan 5, 2016

The past year was quite a strange one for me, marked by drastic, mostly negative changes in my personal life, and drastic, mostly positive changes in my professional life. I never write about my private life on the blog, and I'd like to keep things that way; as for my professional life, the aspects of it that relate to cinema are already known to any of you who still bother to drop by here and read the blog; namely, I worked with TIFF Cinematheque on their "I for Iran: A History of Iranian Cinema" series in multiple capacities, and served as the artistic director of the inaugural edition of the Cine-Iran Festival of Toronto, a position I will continue to hold over the coming years, hopefully.

Scene from Emir Kusturica's Underground (1995)

All these changes had a significant impact on what films I watch and how I watch them. I watched even more Iranian films than before, for a start. I began to watch TV, which I had resisted for as long as I could due my inherent lack of focus and patience for longform storytelling. Yet, the medium is far more forgiving of a depressed mental stateyou'd always rather see old friends than new ones, especially when the world has turned on you, wouldn't you?so Mad Men and Arrested Development and Bob's Burgers and BoJack Horseman and Making a Murderer became a significant chunk of my diet.

Still, I managed to watch 221 films, so I couldn't let the year go by without a final list. The large majority of my screenings were of new releases, but below are the top 15 older films I watched (or re-watched) in 2015 that I cherish most. You'll notice a lot of Iranian films on this list, but I guess that's what happens when you try to reacquaint yourself with your favourite national cinema.

Jan 1, 2016

The Revenant (Innaritu, 2015, 4.5)
Innaritu is back to his miserablist worst. This is such a simple-minded exercise in violence and dreariness, it's hard to see past the hype about the authenticity of the whole enterprise.

The Hateful Eight (Tarantino, 2015, 4.5)
Perhaps the political themes of the film and their modern resonance will become clearer on a second screening, but it's going to be a while before that second screening happens. This was a long, brutal and dull film, without the chutzpah, humor and cleverness with which Tarantino made long, brutal films feel anything but dull in the past.

The Big Short (McKay, 2015, 5.8)
The type of film where the most of everything is on offerthe most acting, the most editing, the most wig, the most fake tan, the most music, the most shrieking, the most machismobut the least reward is taken away. For all the information delivered Margot Robbie in the bathtub, McKay is clueless about how to make the impact of the financial crisis/fraud be felt in any meaningful way.

Heart of a Dog (Anderson, 2015, 5.5)
A personal essay that surely feels more powerful, intimate and significant to Anderson than it does to the audience.

Straight Outta Compton (Gray, 2015, 7.6)
The inaccuracies in the band's history, and (the deserved) accusations of misogyny aside, Straight Outta Compton is a powerful film. Its ensemble of cast of newcomers all deserve star roles in many films to come, particularly Jason Mitchell, whose turn as Eazy E captures the blend of bitterness and heartbreak that has become the man's legacy. It is also remarkable that the scenes of interaction between band members and the police and the chaotic environment of Compton at the time are still shocking to see on the screen. It's a testament to Gray's force behind the camera that despite the harrowing news one hears about the treatment of minorities by the police in America on a regular basis, the film never lets us feel desensitized to the injustice.

Results (Bujalski, 2015, 7.9)
Such a delightful oddity! Bujalski's film never moves in the direction one expects it to, be it from shot to shot, or in the overall arc of its story, but it never loses sight of the story's ebbs and flows. Consistently funny and energetic, and surprisingly fresh with its gender politics.

Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem (Elkabetz/Elkabetz, 2015, 8.1)
The archaic insanity and misogyny of fundamentalist religion knows no bounds; Gett knows how to perfectly channel the audience's rage through this story of Israel's broken justice system. The vast, rotating ensemble of performers are uniformly strong.

Blackhat (Mann, 2015, 5.7)
There are individual sequences that are riveting in their intensity and
visual construction, but this is a profoundly stupid film.

45 Years (Haigh, 2015, 8.1)
Andrew Haigh's follow-up to his brilliant debut, Weekend, proves that he
was no one-hit-wonder. His deep, empathetic understanding of human
emotions and relationships is one of a kind. This is a film that, with
the aid of two exceptional performances from Charlotte Rampling and Tom
Courtenay, shows fragile the strongest bonds can be and how complex love
truly is. It's an immensely moving film, made even more powerful with
its final shot.

The Assassin (Hou, 2015, 7.0)
Gorgeously shot and opulently designed, Hou's latest is a visual feast,
but the director's insistence on conveying moods and creating
atmospheres in this sparsely plotted film often comes at the expense of
his curiosity. The Assassin has a lot of potential for historical and political exploration.

The Mend (Magary, 2015, N/A)
It's entirely possible that on this particular night, my mood wasn't
right for this film. Equally, it is possible that The Mend is far more
deeply preoccupied with appearing bold and curious than with creating
fully realized characters and relationships. I bailed with twenty
minutes left on the clock, but nothing suggested that the finale would
engage me more than the sluggish, tonally confused build-up.

The Maltese Falcon (Huston, 1941, 7.6)
An impressive for Huston, though in retrospect that is no surprise, of
course. One of film noir's earliest example is a technically complex,
thrilling film, with a charming performance from Humphrey Bogart, but it
is undermined by the film's loose grasp of tone, often veering
suddenly, and needlessly, into comedy. The score is particularly at
fault.

The Lobster (Lanthimos, 2015, 7.9)
Darkly, absurdly comic in the fashion we've come to expect of Lanthimos
in the first half of the film, unexpectedly, tenderly romantic in the
second half. It's satirical, but also deeply honest and heartbreaking,
aided by two wonderful turns from Colin Farrell and Rachel Weisz.

Mistress America (Baumbach, 2015, 8.0)
Like a less emotionally complex follow-up to Frances Ha, but
equally endearing and entertaining. This is a sharp and astute look at
the confusions of youth and one of the year's funniest films.

Carol (Haynes, 2015, 9.4)
Haynes's sturdy formalism and the meticulousness of his storytelling is
such that when the emotional blows are delivered, one truly wonders how
and when so much deep, personal engagement with the film came to be.
Haynes remarkably depicts every specific emotion and memory associated
with love, the small, insignificant moments that linger when one is
truly in love, and most films skip over, become moments of majestic
grandeur in Carol. Rooney Mara and Cate Blanchett are a dream.

Creed (Coogler, 2015, 8.1)
The death of an American myth, the birth of an American dream.
Bombastic, sensational directing from Coogler; measured and careful
performances from Jordan, Thompson and Stallone. Creed deftly handles the literal and figurative passing of the baton from the old guard to today's generation.

Arabian Nights: Volume 3, The Enchanted One (Gomes, 2015, 9.4) (review)
"Arabian Nights is a work of grand
ambition, a film that is at once heartbreaking and confrontational,
transcendent but grounded in the mundane realities of living with
poverty. Gomes has made what will quite possibly be regarded as the
definitive film about the global economic crisis."

James White (Mond, 2015, 7.3)
One of the strangest films of the year, and desperately begging for
repeated viewings to works its way into the audience's mind. Christopher
Abbott and Cynthia Nixon deliver stellar performances as a mother and
son in dire straights. James White is a powerful, intense and
overwhelming experience.

Room (Abrahamson, 2015, 7.0)
The wheels fall off the film in the final third, but it's tender,
powerful and tense in the lead-up. Brie Larson is magnetic, as expected,
but the true revelation here is Jacob Tremblay, who delivers what has
to be one of the best child performances of all time.

Brooklyn (Crowley, 2015, 7.7)
Saoirse Ronan is searing in her role as a new Irish immigrant to New York City in this charming, beautifully executed story. Brooklyn
is the type of film that could have been cheesy and ordinary in lesser
hands but is incredibly moving and powerful, even if it's not a
particularly inventive artistic accomplishment.

Arabian Nights: Volume 2, The Desolate One (Gomes, 2015, 9.4) (review)
"The longing voice of
the narrator and Gomes’s romanticist touch paint a wistful,
heartbreaking picture of the sorrow that has taken root in the
community. Aided by Sayombhu Mukdeeprom’s tactile photography and the
director’s unparalleled knack for using pop tracks effectively, “The
Owners of Dixie” contains the most heartfelt and emotionally resonant
moments in the Arabian Nights epic, a majestic chapter that highlights the director’s humanist sensibilities."

Dec 17, 2015

The first two volumes of Miguel Gomes’s latest film, Arabian Nights,
explore the crippling effects of economic mismanagement in Portugal,
ostensibly through the magical lens of Princess Scheherazade, who
narrates the tales to her husband, King Shahryar. The themes that Gomes
is exploring in both volumes are similar—the causes of the financial
meltdown as well as the human and emotional toll it has taken on
Portuguese people—but stylistically, the volumes are drastically
different. The omnibus films thus far have treated the audience to a
medley of genres and tones, from an observational documentary about
decaying shipyards in Viana do Castelo to the absurdist setting of a
courthouse in the “Tears of the Judge” chapter. The third volume is
comprised of fewer segments, but further expands the spectrum of Gomes’
experiment.

The Enchanted One begins with what appears to be the most
faithful adaptation of the Middle Eastern folkloric tale that lends the
film its title. Scheherazade (Crista Alfaiate) imagines escaping the
grip of her husband to explore the sun-soaked sceneries of Baghdad and
the world beyond. In a moment that encapsulates Gomes’ consistently
exceptional use of pop music, an image of Scheherazade’s tearful face,
as she ponders the places she’ll never live to see, cuts to images from
the serene depths of the ocean, to the tune of Glenn Miller’s rendition
of “Perfidia.” Music plays an even more prominent role in this opening
chapter than the rest of the film; one particularly memorable sequence
superimposes the lives of Bohemian Persian nomads with a black and white
video of a Bahian rock band.

Scheherazade’s sorrowful rumination on her life mirrors the
hopelessness of European youth today. The wistful, romantic mood of this
chapter doesn’t quite prepare the audience for the remainder of the
film: an 80-minute documentary about bird-trapping that, juxtaposed with
the non-fiction opening of Vol. 1, neatly bookends the film. “The
Inebriating Chorus of the Chaffinches” tells the story of bird-song
specialists, men who train chaffinches to sing in competitions held in a
suburb of Lisbon, near the southern coast of Portugal. The contests are
socially and historically significant, and date back to the post-WWI
era, when the country was recovering from another period of decline.

This finale is a remarkably quiet way to close off what has thus far
been a rollercoaster of stories and emotions, though Gomes’s penchant
for formal and narrative experimentation is still evident. There are
elements of self-referentiality that connects this episode to the
previous volumes—Chapas, one of the leading bird song specialists, turns
out to be the man who played the role of Simao without Bowels in The Desolate One—and
his exceptional use of music culminates in the film’s bravura ending,
set to the tune of The Langley School Project’s “Calling Occupants of
Interplanetary Craft.”

Yet, the closing chapter imposes tremendous emotional weight on the
audience precisely because it is somber and, on the surface, unassuming.
The plight of his countrymen is profoundly felt by Gomes, and he is
aware of his obligation to bring their pain to light. Consequently, this
three-part epic is as much about the enduring tragedy of Portugal’s
decline as it is about Gomes’ struggle to tell this necessary but
inherently unglamorous story. Arabian Nights is a work of grand
ambition, a film that is at once heartbreaking and confrontational,
transcendent but grounded in the mundane realities of living with
poverty. Gomes has made what will quite possibly be regarded as the
definitive film about the global economic crisis.

Dec 11, 2015

The first volume of Miguel Gomes’s sprawling epic, Arabian Nights,
has the unenviable task of bringing the audience on board with the
filmmaker’s wild vision and convince them to remain on board for another
four hours. Establishing his perspective alongside Princess
Scheherazade’s–the storyteller within the story–the episodes contained
in the first volume vary significantly in tone, mode, and genre. In
comparison, the second volume, The Desolate One, is relatively
straightforward. Consisting only of three episodes, the middle film
continues Gomes’s critique of Portugal’s economic policies and his study
of the social and moral implications of poverty.

In “The Chronicle of the Escape of Simao Without Bowels,” the titular
protagonist is an old, hardened criminal on the run from the police.
Having murdered his wife and two kids, the man—who is given the nickname
because of his lean physique—wanders in rural pastures as he evades
arrest, but when he eventually succumbs to authorities, the villagers
gather to applaud him as a hero. The acerbic humor of this chapter is
pointed, damning at once of the failures of Portugal’s judicial and
police systems, and of the state’s lack of popularity among the
Portuguese people. Monsters aren’t just forgiven; they’re idolized if
they stand up to the government.

The second chapter is thematically similar, if drastically different
in tone. The setting of “Tears of the Judge” is an outdoor courthouse,
in which a small crime—theft of household items by a tenant—is being
adjudicated. The hilariously convoluted plot moves around the courtroom
and incriminates everyone present as the maze created by the theft and
its background gets increasingly complex. Gomes’s finger is pointed at
the deep-rooted corruption and the needlessly complex bureaucracy of his
country. The austerity measures imposed on the Portuguese by greedy
politicians and foreign investors are blatantly, though with tongue
firmly in cheek, incriminated; and further yet, the broad scope of this
absurdist chapter allows the filmmaker to poke fun at entrenched sexism
and racism within Portuguese society.

The third chapter ends the film in stark contrast with the previous
two. In “The Owners of Dixie,” Gomes enters an apartment complex where
the inhabitants are suffering from the effects of the financial crisis.
Structured as several small vignettes about different residents in the
building, our perspective is mostly that of a poodle named Dixie, at
first owned by an elderly couple, then passed around to new owners who
turn to another woman for help with the animal. In the process, these
working-class characters open up with their heartbreaking stories.

This finale is similar in tone to the second chapter of Gomes’s previous film, Tabu.
It’s tinged with a bitter sense of nostalgia for better times gone by,
when the neighbours would gather for New Year parties, and Brazilian
nudists would camp on the rooftop of the building. The longing voice of
the narrator and Gomes’s romanticist touch paint a wistful,
heartbreaking picture of the sorrow that has taken root in the
community. Aided by Sayombhu Mukdeeprom’s tactile photography and the
director’s unparalleled knack for using pop tracks effectively, “The
Owners of Dixie” contains the most heartfelt and emotionally resonant
moments in the Arabian Nights epic, a majestic chapter that highlights the director’s humanist sensibilities.

Dec 4, 2015

*This review was originally published at Movie Mezzanine. The Restless One, the first of three volumes that comprise Miguel Gomes’ ambitious six-hour long omnibus Arabian Nights,
begins at a shipyard in Viana do Castelo, Portugal. The decaying
infrastructure of the port and the frank, solemn tenor of the narrators’
voices as they describe the decline of the shipyard convey the gloomy
mood of a country that has fallen victim to economic misery. The sense
of aimlessness and desperation is palpably captured in extreme long
shots that capture hundreds of men wandering around the harbor.

Of course, nothing can prepare the audience for what turn the man behind films like Our Beloved Month of August and Tabu
might take and, true to form, Gomes subverts the expectations set by
the opening few minutes by breaking down the fourth wall and entering
his film. The fictional Gomes is a director on the run, and is
eventually punished for the extravagance and reverie of his filmic
ambitions in a country where strict economic pressures are imposed. This
hilarious storytelling detour shows a level of self-awareness that runs
through the entire Arabian Night opus. Gomes’s wildest, most
auspicious and gloriously messy film to date borrows the structure of
the eponymous Middle Eastern collection of folkloric tales, but
appropriated to modern Portugal under the government’s extreme austerity
measures.

Commercial requirements have forced the film to be marketed as a
trilogy—a fate that the film’s director doesn’t necessarily view as a
hindrance—but the coherence in the structure of Arabian Nights
only becomes clear over the course of the three films. Each volume can
be studied as a separate entity and because of the episodic nature of
the narrative each feels like a self-contained feature. But it is in
conjunction with one another that the films reveal their thematic
resonance and stylistic grandeur. The Restless One provides the
underlying context of Portugal’s financial crisis and introduces us to
Princess Scheherazade, the Persian wife of King Shahryar, who narrated
stories to her husband over one thousand and one nights. The framing
device and the poverty—economic, moral, and, consequently,
emotional—felt in Portugal today establishes the audience’s grasp on the
film’s continuously varying perspectives and tonal shifts.

In Scheherazade’s first tale, The Men with Hard-ons, Gomes
farcically criticizes the political corruption that has led to economic
disparity in Portugal. During a meeting between Portuguese ministers,
European politicians, and a banker, the men are given a potion by an
African magician that gives them powerful and lasting boners. The
metaphor for greed among the elite is evident. That the sequence’s blunt
satire is so lacking in subtlety is further emphasized as the film
progresses, but Gomes’s capability to draw in the audience to stories
that are individually so magnetic is such that the tonal shifts feel
seamless.

The final chapter in this volume, The Swim of the Magnificents,
returns the film to the form of docu-fiction again. Structured around
three interviews with men and women who have lost their jobs, the
conversations are raw, confrontational and painfully heartfelt. Gomes
finds the depth of agony amongst his people and observantly studies the
drastic effects of poverty on relationships and mental health. But the
chapter, and consequently the volume, ends with a celebratory ritual—a
coming together of downtrodden people on a beach for a collective moment
of festivities. It’s a spiritual experience that transcends material
concerns and a cinematic closure that is quite fitting. The moment of
respite from the troubles of the real world is fleeting, only until
Scheherazade returns with another tale.